


Five Times Mohinder Dreamed of Sylar (and One Time He Didn't)

by tiptoe39



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-13
Updated: 2010-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:31:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoe39/pseuds/tiptoe39
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dreams were horrifying, were sensual, were full of adventure and warmth and truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Mohinder Dreamed of Sylar (and One Time He Didn't)

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [](http://taliatoennien.livejournal.com/profile)[**taliatoennien**](http://taliatoennien.livejournal.com/).

**I.** In the first dream, he didn't see Sylar's face.

He couldn't see anything of the man in the back of the taxi except for his hands. Rough hands that moved in quick, confident jerks until there was a sharp snap, and his father's lifeless face was pressed against the window. Mohinder stumbled back, and he shouted, a thousand feelings coming to the fore that he should have already processed, already disposed of in the ceremony that had returned Chandra Suresh to the sea.

Bewildered by it all, he peered out from the storm of emotions at the one constant thing in the scene -- the face of the boy who had been guiding him. How much did he know? Was the boy showing him this, or was he simply guiding Mohinder through his own speculation on what must have happened? The rational piece of him knew that he had no idea how his father had actually died. His brain was most likely amalgamating his own experience in that taxicab -- the chilling words spoken by the man with the glasses, his own flight -- into the nebulous circumstances surrounding his father's death. There was no reason this image should be the truth.

Mohinder didn't yet have a face to put to the hands that had ripped his father away. Still, he itched to lunge forward and open the door. He'd pull this killer out, look at him eye to eye and take the measure of him. Was he a copy of Mohinder himself? He'd certainly usurped Mohinder's position, taken on the role of Chandra's eager son and pupil, before pride and lust for power had taken over. That wasn't so different from Mohinder's own journey. He, too, had eagerly followed his father's teachings until their dark side emerged. But he'd only driven his father away. He hadn't killed him.

Not that he wasn't envious of Sylar for being there in his father's last moments. That was supposed to be a son's job. And here his father had allowed another into his confidence. Bitterness burned inside Mohinder's breast. Perhaps he should have killed his father with his own hands rather than allowing him to die at the hands of an impostor. The man certainly deserved it for forsaking and betraying his son.

All this came with a sort of dream logic that took away the shock of thinking it. Except that for walking away from that scene of death, he realized that made him and Sylar the same.

In the dream, he was shaking with rage. But he woke up in tears.

**II.** The second time, he didn't know the face was Sylar's.

Awkwardness and a sense that something wasn't wasn't entirely right had persisted, trailing like a tin can on a string, clattering behind the small car Mohinder and Zane Taylor shared. Still, the rapport with this innocent, sort of fumbling musician had been pleasant. Zane was curious and enthusiastic; Mohinder could almost see in the passenger seat a younger and more naive version of himself. Zane projected inexperience, naivete. and yet he had a self-assured attitude toward what he called his destiny that Mohinder had found uncharacteristic and a little disturbing. Zane was a puzzle whose pieces didn't seem to quite fit together. And perhaps that's why Mohinder liked him so much.

Their parting in front of the motel room doors that first night was strange. For a moment Mohinder thought Zane's eyes had traveled the length of his body. Was he thinking... but no, how _could_ he think that? It hadn't come up in conversation, certainly. Perhaps Mohinder's head was clouded from too much driving. It was certainly heavy enough to take him into sleep the moment he lay down.

In the dream that ensued, he opened his eyes to find Zane leaning over him, dropping soft kisses onto his lips. Zane was whispering his usual breathy words of destiny and fate and we-were-meant-to-be, and Mohinder's upturned mouth opened to catch each soft sound, to return them in kind. Zane's frame, wiry and solid, was a brace around Mohinder's own too-scrawny shoulders and hips. The sheets felt like melting chocolate all around them, thick, ever-moving swells of liquid. Their bodies moved in a sensuous ryhthm that turned Mohinder's bones to cotton, turned his skin to salt and fire. He tried to curl himself around Zane like a rug. He wanted so badly. He needed so much. He hadn't felt like this in years.

And then at once Zane's eyes went blank, and he fell forward, limp, onto Mohinder's chest. The air chilled the fire in Mohinder's skin, and he whispered "Zane," over and over, in increasing horror. He ran a tentative hand through Zane's hair. There was a sharp edge where there shouldn't have been. Mohinder took in a breath, his stomach turning. The firm edge of sawed-off skull was caked with sticky liquid, and when Mohinder's fingers slipped they touched the pulsing, cooling tissue of an organ that was never meant to be exposed. He gave a cry.

With strength born of fear, he pushed the corpse off him and looked up into the room that was shrouded in darkness. "Sylar," he whispered into the air. There was only the sound of a breathy chuckle. Mohinder looked down at Zane's body, but it was gone.

He shouted himself awake.

Padding into the bathroom to get a drink of water for his scream-sore throat, he parted the curtains to see a figure moving silently, steplessly through the motel's parking lot. He gripped the sink with a trembling hand. He knew that shape, and now he knew its name.

**III.** Molly's screams woke him up from the third dream.

Her nightmares had been far worse than anything he could claim. And he hated himself for continuing to feel as burdened as he did. Not when this child -- this innocent victim of Sylar's savagery -- continued to whisper, through sniffles and despite the trembling of her jaw, that the bogeyman had showed up again in her dream. That he'd said he was going to cut her open. "He's dead, sweetheart," Mohinder said, holding her fast. "He can't hurt you anymore."

The bogeyman should have been dead. The bogeyman should have be gone from all of their lives, long since sliced wide open before their eyes. There was no reason to believe otherwise. So he kept holding on to Molly, and telling her she was safe, but God help him, he was surely lying. Because the bogeyman was in his dreams, too, alive and frightening.

In Mohinder's dream, Sylar had been watching him. Watching and judging, like an angel on high, with eyes that marked some for death and some for life. Those eyes pledged to bring death and pain to him all over again, taking away his new, makeshift family, tearing the people he loved to pieces while Mohinder stood by and witnessed it. For Mohinder wasn't one of those marked for death. He wasn't nearly so lucky.

When Sylar looked at Mohinder, his eyes said, _I own you._

_I have seen what you dream. I have seen that you can't stop thinking about me. What you wish I was, what you wish I'd say and do. I'll never allow you the satisfaction of granting your wishes. But I will watch you, as you dream of me -- and of what we could have been to each other, if I wasn't such a monster._

Those eyes would never leave him alone, not as long as he lived.

"He's not dead," Molly whispered in his ear. "I know where he is. He's far away, but he's alive. Mohinder, you have to keep protecting me. Please."

"Of course I will," Mohinder said, and hated himself all the more, because her words gave him hope.

**IV.** He'd wished the fourth dream had been reality.

"He's my son," Arthur Petrelli had said. And suddenly the man who had destroyed lives upon lives was a human being, civilized, even tame. In the eyes where there had been such cold-blooded savagery, there was only now mild respect and a little apprehension. Arthur called him Gabriel. But this wasn't the angel standing in judgment who had haunted his dreams. This was the statue of the angel. Polished marble, perfect to every detail, unmoving, with no life, no strength with which to spread his wings.

Mohinder eyed Gabriel with suspicion, but the transformation gave him pause. What if Sylar had been this person all along? What if the man Mohinder had first met so long ago had been Gabriel, instead? How many lies would not have been told, how many dreams would not have been shattered?

And that night, Mohinder dreamed his whole life over again. His father had gone to New York to find his Patient Zero, and Mohinder had followed. Not because Chandra was dead but because he had succeeded. "You must come and meet this Gabriel," the delighted voice buzzed through the long-distance line. "He's so much like you, Mohinder. So bright, so special."

And Mohinder did come, touching down in New York with a suitcase and a smile. Beside the beaming figure of his father was this gentle, impeccable man who held out a milk-white hand to shake. In his eyes Mohinder instantly felt a kinship, and as they rode in the taxi downtown to the apartment, he and Gabriel engaged in talk large and small, all the while their eyes sharing things ever more important than words could convey.

They set up shop in the city, renting a small laboratory where they worked to add more pinpricks and red strings to the map Chandra had stretched against the wall. When the time was right, Mohinder and Gabriel set out to cross the country and bring the news to those with gifts that they were truly different and special. And somewhere along the way to the strong woman in Las Vegas, the telepath in Los Angeles and the invulnerable cheerleader in Texas, they found each other, as well.

But then Mohinder began to get jealous.

Jealous, because with every person they met, he became more and more aware that he would never have such promise. Jealous, because even Gabriel was one of them, soaking up power as he met each of these extraordinary people, becoming more and more powerful without even having to try. And jealous because he could never be the one to protect the people he loved, not against the dangers that he knew were now out there.

So when they returned home, Mohinder began to slip out of bed late at night and sneak down to the lab. He scrutinized samples and adjusted formulas until he created a serum that would make him special at last.

What it made him was a monster.

The last moments of the dream were hazy, but when Mohinder woke up, his hands were clenching the comforter, twisting and wringing the thick cotton with tight fists. And he was sure that in the dream, it hadn't been the comforter he had squeezed into submission, but somebody's neck.

He got up to look in the mirror. New scales had formed on his back. He hung his head.

There would be no more wishing his dreams were real.

**V.** The fifth dream was the hardest to bear.

He was chained to a chair, shivering, wet, shackled and helpless. A man he'd used to respect, used to very nearly count as a friend, had thrown him in jail, made sure he could do nothing to help himself or the others around him. Nathan's eyes had been kind, but his words had made no sense. And as lost as Mohinder had been, he couldn't agree to help him in his quest to neuter what Nathan saw as a menace. Not with his friends out there, still trying to evade capture, still trying to put an end to this nightmare. So Nathan had left Mohinder alone, and here he sat, chills wracking his body. His strength was fading and his hope was dwindling away. He lowered his head and closed his eyes.

A clang sounded behind him, harsher and louder than a train bell, and Mohinder's head jarred with the vibrations. He could hear muffled shouts, the sound of gunfire, and then more of the awful clanging. He twisted his head to look over his shoulder as best he could, managing to turn his body in time to see the thick iron door fly across the room like it was made of cardboard. It shot past Mohinder, missing him by inches, and slammed against the far wall. Light poured in.

Someone had appeared and disappeared within the space off a few seconds, a silhouette Mohinder's darkness-weary eyes had barely registered. Now that same someone was behind him, working at the heavy bonds that held him, and with a metallic grating of metal they came free. As they fell, more gunshots sounded, and with a groan the person behind him stumbled. Mohinder went instantly to hands and knees, trying to avoid stray bullets. He peeked out from behind his chair in time to see the agents who'd shot at them fly to the ceiling and hang there, suspended by a familiar and chilling unseen hand. He looked up.

"I let them think they could capture me," said Sylar, smiling down at him.

Down the corridors of Building 26 they raced. Sylar cleared the way, and Mohinder followed closely at his heels. The partnership born in the immediacy of fighting a greater enemy needed no words to seal it. The crowning moment came, though, when they found the mainframe feeding the network of computers that ran the whole operation. Sylar grinned and focused on a pipe hanging from the ceiling. He twisted his hand, and the screws holding it in place went flying. With a great rush of dusty air, the pipe fell into Sylar's outstretched hands, and he tossed it to Mohinder. Like a slugger at a championship game, Mohinder took a mighty swing, and the whole thing came tumbling down.

Amid the sparks and the distant rumbles, Mohinder could still hear his own heart, jackhammer-fast. He stepped close to Sylar. "You came to help me."

"Did you think I wouldn't?" Sylar said. There was something almost warm in his gaze.

Mohinder shook his head. "No. I knew you would. You can't have liked having the government track you down any more than the rest of us did."

"I don't think we're off the wanted list for this little act of domestic terrorism," Sylar said as a spark flew by his face. "Still, that opens up some new possibilities. Wouldn't you say?"

A slow smile grew across Mohinder's face.

And then he was awake. And it was all gone. No smile. No possibilities, No freedom. He was still shackled to the chair, still powerless. There was nothing around him but the dark and the cold.

Sylar could end this, he knew. Sylar alone had the power. If he thought about Mohinder, if he thought about the family he'd almost had and lost again. If he cared at all about the people he'd come to know, to hate and to love with equal ferocity in that twisted mind, Sylar would save them.

He never did.

**and  
I.** He doesn't dream at all anymore.

They have him too well drugged up. He lies, useless and mindless, against a padded wall, images of a life he used to have just barely present in the corners of his mind. How far he's fallen from where he's been. How much he could have done. And here he is, a prisoner. Trapped inside the foggy swamp of his own mind, unable to think or plan or even dream.

He thinks he remembers once dreaming. He remembers the dreams were horrifying, were sensual, were full of adventure and warmth and truth. And he remembers a pair of dark eyes that followed him through each dream. But he can't quite conjure up the face.

Maybe one day, when sense and consciousness return to his life, he'll remember all of it. Until then, he'll just dream of someday dreaming again.


End file.
